Richard Baxter
Richard Baxter
Richard Baxterwas an English Puritan church leader, poet, hymn-writer, theologian, and controversialist. Dean Stanley called him "the chief of English Protestant Schoolmen". After some false starts, he made his reputation by his ministry at Kidderminster, and at around the same time began a long and prolific career as theological writer. After the Restoration he refused preferment, while retaining a non-separatist Presbyterian approach, and became one of the most influential leaders of the Nonconformists, spending time in prison. His views on...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionClergyman
Date of Birth12 November 1615
Keep up a humble sense of your own faults, and that will make you compassionate to others
An aching tooth is better out than in. To lose a rotting member is a gain.
It is not the reading of many books which is necessary to make a man wise or good; but well reading of a few.
For it was thy sin, and the sin of all the world, that lay upon our Redeemer, and his sacrifice and satisfaction is sufficient for all, and the fruits of it are offered to one as well as another, but it is true that it was never the intent of his mind to pardon and save any that would not by faith and repentance be converted.
A holy and heavenly life is a continual pain to the consciences of sinners around you and continually solicits them to change their course.
Get masters of families to do their duty, and they will not only spare you a great deal of labor, but will much further the success of your labors. You are not like to see any general reformation, till you procure family reformation. Some little religion there may be, here and there; but while it is confined to single persons, and is not promoted in families, it will not prosper, nor promise much future increase.
Surely love is both work and wages.
Sinners, hear and consider, if you wilfully condemn your souls to bestiality, God will condemn them to perpetual misery.
The devils never had a Savior offered to them, but you have; and do you yet make light of Him?
In a divine commonwealth holiness must have the principal honor and encouragement, and a great difference be made between the precious and the vile.
In my library I have profitably and pleasantly dwelt among the shining lights, with which the learned, wise, and holy men of all ages have illuminated the world.
Life is short, and we are dull, and eternal things are necessary, and the souls that depend on our teaching are precious.
Sit not down without assurance. Get alone, and bring thy heart to the bar of trial: force it to answer the interrogatories put to it to set the qualifications of the saints on one side, and the qualifications of thyself on the other side, and then judge what resemblance there is between them.... Yet be sure thou judge by a true touchstone, and mistake not the Scripture description of a saint, that thou neither acquit nor condemn thyself by mistake.
This is the sanctification of your studies: when they are devoted to God, and when He is the end, the object, and the life of them all.